Synopsis: I’m a Family Practitioner from Sioux City, Iowa. In 2010 I danced back from the brink of burnout, and honoring a 1 year non-compete clause, traveled and worked in out-of-the-way places in Alaska, Nebraska, Iowa, and New Zealand. After three years working with a Community Health Center, I went back to traveling and adventures in temporary positions. Assignments in Alaska, rural Iowa, suburban Pennsylvania and western Nebraska have followed. I finished my most recent assignment in Clarinda on May 18. Right now I’m in northern British Columbia, getting a first-hand look at the Canadian system. Any identifiable patient information has been included with permission.

As I write this, 183 wildfires rampage through the wilds of British Columbia. The smell of wood smoke permeates the air and a haze hangs over the nearby mountains.

We have been lucky during this last week of fires, with 3 days of solid, soaking rain. But with complex topography comes complex weather patterns, and nearby valleys have had no precipitation at all.

Yesterday I had call. I took care of people with problems in their skins, bones, throats, lungs, hearts, eyes, abdomens, fingers, toes, brains, ears, and genitals. Two came in close together, with problems exceeding our facility’s capability. I ordered blood work; I like to sound prepared when I speak to a doc in a referral center. Then I waited.

And waited. When I got results back, I called the hospital in Prince George to speak to a couple of consultants and to formulate a plan, then I had the central ambulance dispatching service called.

Theoretically, the dispatch centralization makes sense; practically, however, it means a terrible delay in getting patients into the ambulance.

I had hoped to send both patients in the same vehicle to Prince George, but in the course of making arrangements I found out that the number of injuries coming in out of the forest fire had overwhelmed the schedule for sophisticated diagnostic tools, and couldn’t I please send the second patient to Dawson Creek?

It meant a longer delay for the second patient, but I agreed, and called the ER there with a bizarre, creepy history perfect for the opening of a horror movie.

Of course, in the hours between the arrival of those two patients and their departure, other patients came in for treatment.

At six I walked to the hotel to eat supper with Bethany. I had been continuously occupied for the previous 10 hours. I wolfed my food, napped briefly, and walked back to the ER.

I started in on documentation, typing directly into the Electronic Medical Record. I continued between the patients who kept trickling in. I ran into a surprising number of patients with back pain who adamantly spoke against narcotics (and I agreed with them).

I finished at ten, and returned to the hotel. I had attended 21 patients. The emotional fatigue of waiting to transport those two critical patients far exceeded the physical tiredness.